Daniels: 'Those words are an insult to Purdue'

Jul. 20, 2013

Mitch Daniels

Mitch Daniels spent a good part of last week fending off questions about 3-year-old emails he wrote as Indiana’s governor, his criticism of the work of historian Howard Zinn, academic freedom and his job as Purdue University president.

Here are three takeaways from an interview with him late in a week he’d rather forget.

• On emails that discussed making sure Zinn’s work wasn’t in Indiana classrooms and asking why it was part of professional development courses for teachers: “Let’s be clear: I was talking about K-12 education. I had a reason to want to know if his book was being used in classrooms. The first time a kid learns American history, he shouldn’t be told that Abraham Lincoln was a racist and the Founding Fathers did this to exploit people and all that stuff. They ought to be told something about the Gettysburg Address, Normandy, landing on the moon and, you know, positive events. ...

“I don’t care what IU teaches. I care about what gets taught in the K-12 system. What IU teaches is a matter of academic freedom, etc. My question was, I hope no one is using this textbook and no one is teaching out of it (at the K-12 level). That was all. No one was saying they couldn’t have that book or have that class. My only question was, why should we encourage it?”

• On the dividing line between his role as governor and the one he has now at Purdue: “Look, I had a job that required me to — wait, it didn’t require me, but I chose to — take clear stances on a thousand issues. ... The pledge I took (when named Purdue president), first of all, was to foresake anything partisan — which I have done, without exception — and to stay out of public issues that could be construed that way. And I think I’ve been faithful to that. Then somebody dredges up an email from (three years) ago. I responded, but I had to restrain myself even there so as not to re-engage in these things.

“I’m not going to be told that I’m in favor of censorship or against free speech or against academic freedom, when the reverse is true. I know about gritting your teeth and bearing untruths. It goes with the territory. I’ve lived with it for years now. But in this case, left undemolished, those words are an insult to Purdue, and I don’t want this institution tainted in any way.”

• On whether this case just made his job transitioning into role of Purdue president that much harder: “It did this week, just in terms of the hurt that it brought and the time that it took. ... I’m here to lift Purdue up and never cause it a problem. If it were just me, I’d grit my teeth and shrug it off. But I think why this was such a hard week is because my ambition is to make this place look great and bring it to the attention of people in a positive way. I think to an extent we’re starting to do that. But this week wasn’t that model.”